Bangladesh police on Thursday claimed that no Interpol red notice was issued against Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader Salah Uddin Ahmed who is now in the custody of Indian police in Meghalaya.
Two officers of Meghalaya police special branch interrogated the BNP joint secretary general for nearly two hours on the day over the intrusion.
IGP AKM Shahidul Hoque on Thursday told reporters that Interpol had not issued any notice against Salah Uddin as ‘he is already in police custody [after his appearance] in the Indian state of Meghalaya.’
He would be brought back under the extradition treaty between the two countries, the IGP added.
No red notice was put up on the website of the France-based Interpol for Salah Uddin till Thursday evening.
The Telegraph newspaper published from Kolkata on Thursday reported that Interpol’s Dhaka unit had notified its Indian counterpart in New Delhi about Salah Uddin and requested them to arrest him.
Meghalaya director-general of police Rajiv Mehta told The Telegraph it was not clear if the notification
was issued previously or after the ‘BNP leader’ surfaced in India. ‘The red alert notice was received by us [Meghalaya police] yesterday through the CBI and we have already responded to the CBI,’ he said.
BNP international affairs secretary Asaduzzaman Ripon at a news briefing at the party’s central office on Thursday said an Interpol notice was ‘nothing important’.
It reflected the attitude of Bangladesh’s government, he said adding that the Interpol notice was published as government, being a member of Interpol, wanted it.
BBC Bangla service on Thursday reported that two of Salah Uddin’s relatives met him at Civil Hospital in Shillong.
Salah Uddin reportedly told his relatives that he was taken blindfolded on several transports before being left at Polo Ground in Shillong.
One of the relatives, Ayub Ali, who is living in Kolkata, told BBC after meeting Salah Uddin that the BNP leader could not identify the spot where he was standing after being abandoned and was loitering. Some locals told him that he was in Meghalaya’s Shillong.
Salah Uddin claimed he went to the local police and introduced himself, although Shillong police earlier said that locals informed them after they found the person hanging around there. The police then took him to a mental hospital.
Salah Uddin has been under police guard and the physicians and nurses who were treating him declined to disclose any information except about his health condition.
DJ Gowshami, a local cardiologist, said that the BNP leader was carrying some medicines which they believed were from Bangladesh.
The physician said that Salah Uddin was suffering from cardiac problem and the medicines were for that.
Two officers of Meghalaya police special branch interrogated the BNP leader for nearly two hours on the day. They, however, refused to give any information.
Hasina Ahmed, wife of Salah Uddin, has yet to get an Indian visa to visit her husband in Meghalaya.
The BNP chairperson’s press wing member Sayrul Kabir Khan told New Age on Thursday evening that Salah Uddin’s wife did not get the Indian visa as yet.
Many journalists waited at Salah Uddin’s residence at Gulshan in the capital all day on Thursday to talk to Hasina but she was not available for comments.
Around 6:00pm, a staff of the building in which Salah Uddin’s flat is located, conveyed to the journalists that Hasina could not talk to them as she was busy.
On Wednesday, Hasina told reporters that she along with her relatives were ready to head for Meghalaya as soon as they get the visas.
She said she had applied for Indian visa on Tuesday, the day she had talked to her husband over phone two months after Salah Uddin had gone ‘missing’.
It was learnt that BNP assistant office secretary Abdul Latif Jony reached Shillong Wednesday evening to meet Salah Uddin.
Salah Uddin, who surfaced in Meghalaya on Monday, was admitted to Institute of Mental Health and Neurological Science in Shillong, his wife said after talking to him over phone on Tuesday.
He is now under treatment in Shillong Civil Hospital in the capital of Meghayala.
Salah Uddin was allegedly picked up by law enforcement agencies from a Uttara house in Dhaka on March 10.
Source: New Age
